The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4) by Duncan Joseph

Author:Duncan, Joseph [Duncan, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Cobra E-books
Published: 2013-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

2

He was sent at the request of Duke Ferdinand Zrinski, whose father had been granted a small fiefdom for opposing a peasant uprising in the early 1550’s.

I say it was the Kingdom of Croatia, but there really wasn’t much of a kingdom by that time. After the war with the Turks, and with the ongoing peasant revolts, Croatia had become a sparsely populated and war-ravaged land. In fact, people at the time called it the remnants of the remnants of the once great Croatian Kingdom.

Getvar was the name of the village the young man was sent to. He had been ordered to investigate reports of vampirism, and, if those reports were confirmed to be factual-- and not just the fearsome tales of superstitious country folk—to notify his superiors so the Church could intervene.

The Ordo Lucis, the Order of Light, was the precursor to the Venatori, who would hunt our kind nearly to extinction in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Church knew of our existence, had known of us for hundreds of years, but had not yet decided we were a threat. Pius the Fifth was the pontiff who finally ordered our extermination. He developed a rather paranoid hatred of our kind when one of our brethren attacked and killed his cousin, a bishop, who had been a close boyhood friend. Before Pius, we were considered by the Church to be much like any other predatory species, a part of God’s plan, albeit a mysterious one. Let the peasants believe what they pleased—and they had some pretty wild superstitions about us-- the Church had an empire to run, and a Pagan world to proselytize.

Justus was only thirty years old at the time, but he had already garnered a respectable reputation as a scholar and an author. He wrote A Commentary on the Books of the Old and New Testament, The History of the Sacred and Profane and a two-volume study History of the Ghosts and Vampires of Europe. It was that last which brought him to the attention of the Order of Light, and his irrepressible curiosity that compelled him to join their secret cabal.

He was a shockingly handsome young man, with bright green eyes and auburn hair shaved into the monastic tonsure typical of that period, the “cleric’s crown”. He maintained a light, finely trimmed beard, his one vanity, which his superiors tolerated because of his brilliance and piety. And he was pious. His devotion to his savior was rivaled only by his thirst for knowledge. If he had one failing, it was his weakness for the sins of the flesh, but I suppose we’re all entitled to one vice in this world.

Now ordinarily, when there were reports of vampirism in those days, the Church dispatched more than one member of the clergy to investigate the claims. Usually they sent at least three monks, sometimes as many as half a dozen, escorted by a small retinue of soldiers, but Getvar was a village of little political or economic importance. It was small and poor, and the people in the region were known to be especially superstitious.

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